Unlocking Cosmic Mysteries with the Invisible Radio Universe

By Hamsa Padmanabhan on 05 March, 2020

The epoch of 'Cosmic Dawn', when the first stars and galaxies were born, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang --- is considered the 'final frontier' of research in cosmology today. Observations at radio frequencies have opened up very exciting prospects for studying the evolution of the universe from its earliest stages to the present time. Unprecedented amount of data from the biggest radio facilities around the world will soon help to answer fundamental questions about our cosmos: from a deeper understanding of Einstein's theory of gravity, to whether we are alone in this vast expanse of universe. I will discuss the groundbreaking progress being made in this fascinating field in Canada and elsewhere.

About Hamsa Padmanabhan

Hamsa Padmanabhan is currently a CITA Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics,and an Associate of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Toronto. She was previously a Tomalla post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She graduated from IUCAA, Pune, India with a Ph.D. in Physics in December 2015. A top student throughout school, college and university, she has won numerous prizes and been a recipient of prestigious fellowships at each stage of her career. In particular, having represented her country and won several awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2006, she became one of the few in the world who has the honour of a minor planet in the solar system being named after her.